


Fifty-Seven Close Shaves Aboard the Obra Dinn

by Mithrigil



Category: Return of the Obra Dinn (Video Game)
Genre: Age of Sail, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, Canon-Typical Violence, Class Differences, Dramatic Irony, Eldritch, Foreshadowing, Gratuitous Don Giovanni, Horror, Languages and Linguistics, Missing Scene, Other, Pain, Parallels, Spoilers, Swords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 18:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16979856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: The sixty deaths and disappearances the Company investigated aren't the only hazards of life at sea.Or, an extensive exercise in dramatic irony.





	Fifty-Seven Close Shaves Aboard the Obra Dinn

**Author's Note:**

> Dear Lucas Pope: you have reinvigorated my writing and provided hours of amusement and intellectual pleasure. If you ever find this, I hope you consider it a fitting tribute to a truly amazing game. _Thank you,_ from the eldritch depths of my heart.

**19\. Abigail Hoscut Witterel, Passenger**

“Yes, yes – oh – please – _ah!_ No, stop—”

The ship lurches, and so does Robert, and unfortunately for Abigail’s skull they do so in the opposite directions, with the end result that her crown meets the wall with a rattling _thunk_.

Really, it’s almost comical the way Robert immediately stills, fingers unfurling on her knees, jaw frozen in a mute O with the terror of having hurt her. She almost reaches for him but instinct still brings her hands to her head first, patting it down. Pain, yes, but no blood, she thinks. Or if there is, there’s very little. Sweat, though, sweat in abundance, dripping from his brow to hers, pooling in the hollow of her throat, so cool, so salty in this humid air. Her head throbs, an echoed frantic heartbeat just slightly off rhythm with the evidence of his, thick and drumming inside her even as he keeps himself steady. He waits for her. It’s horribly erotic.

If Abigail is honest with herself, she could stop this, and probably should. Though it’s dark now, there are still the dregs of a party out on the deck, and distantly she can hear Mr. Pasqua’s fiddle and the laughter and song and stamping that accompanies it. The other passengers will be discreet, she’s sure, and no crewman would dare tease the Captain’s wife about enjoying her marital privilege. (If William didn’t kill them for it first, Robert _certainly_ would.) But on voyages like this, they have so little time together, and she knows that soon enough her Robert will be at the mercy of his mistress, the _Obra Dinn_ herself. 

Perhaps the ship is jealous. 

“It’s fine, love,” she says, because it has to be. “It’s no one’s fault. We’re fine. Go on.” 

Robert laughs, relieved, and without withdrawing from her leans over to snatch a tumbled bolster off the floor and put it behind her head. She matches his laugh, giddy with adrenaline and drive, and takes advantage of that shift to wrap her legs around his hips and start things up again. 

Renewed vigor aside, the precaution makes the next several minutes much less eventful. There _is_ a small bloodstain on the bolster when they’re done, but it’s nothing the sun won’t bleach away.

*

**20\. Nunzio Pasqua, Passenger**

That night has come is no reason to stop playing. Nunzio’s bow-arm has gone past sore into the festive happy numbness of being spurred by an eager crowd, but ah, such is the fate of a musician! With a flourish, he finishes this jig, and the sailors clap and whoop, the ladies and their gentlemen-of-the-crew spinning off a few extra drunken steps, curtsies and bows long forgotten.

Someone thrusts a tankard in his general direction – Nunzio has to tuck the fiddle under his arm to grab it before it sloshes all over him or anything else. When that same person asks, or rather demands, “Another!”, Nunzio laughs and swallows as much of the ale as he can. “My friend, a slow one, please! I had not thought to pay my entire passage in one night.”

That gets a few laughs, but the first thing to cut through it is one of the women – the elder of the two, shoving the younger forward. “Then let’s have a song, if we’re not to dance! Come, Jane! You’ll need to keep fresh.”

“But ma’am—”

“No buts, dear. If you would, Mr. Pasqua?”

Nunzio looks both women over; the elder is perhaps a little drunk, but there is a look of good nature about her cajoling, and the younger is blushing, not about to cry, so Nunzio thinks he has only stumbled over an old argument between a chaperone and her charge. He drains the tankard and hands it off, then reseats his violin with as comforting a smile as can be managed with ones chin otherwise occupied. There really should be a groove in the board to make such things easier – his neck is almost as sore as his bow arm at this point.

“Signiorina,” he calls her, and that gives him an idea – the perfect well-known piece to gauge a young woman’s vocal prowess without embarrassing her or the crowd has already been written, and while it’s usually accompanied on far more than a violin, Nunzio can make do. He plays, rather than says, Don Giovanni’s second _signionriiiiina,_ and more than one man on the crew knows what those notes mean.

Belatedly, Nunzio realizes that the young woman is certainly not going to sing one of the Don’s arias, and Elvira’s are too difficult, so he switches over to a more famous duet from earlier in the opera. Since he can’t play and sing the Don’s first verse at the same time, he just plays the familiar tune, and the young lady giggles behind her hand. Good, Nunzio thinks, he chose well.

_There, you will yield your hand,_  
_There you will tell me yes,_  
_Such pleasures I have planned there, dear;_  
_Come home with me, let’s go._

She sings – in English, rather than Italian, but it cannot be helped,

_“I’d like to come and try it,_  
_But I cannot be sure._  
_Nay, sire, I cannot quiet_  
_This trembling in my core,_  
_This trembling in my core!”_

Her voice is light and fine, and pleasantly distracting enough that when someone else sings, deep and just as clear, and _in Italian—_

_“Come, my delightful beauty!”_

—Nunzio doesn’t miss a beat. But the young lady does, lapsing into Italian for two words, _“I so—”_ before turning and gasping, and missing the rest of her line.

The wolf-whistles of the sailors confirm that something of great consequence has happened, so Nunzio looks up as much as he is able. Sure enough, the rough-edged baritone now singing _“I will change your fate,”_ is the first mate himself, Mr. William Hoscut.

Even Nunzio laughs at that a little. Not enough to stop playing, of course – he is well-trained, thank you – but enough to add a jaunt to his accompaniment. And da Ponte is always better in Italian, even Italian with a Scottish accent. Mozart always knew what he was about. 

The young lady, now blushing as red as the setting sun, goes on, perhaps too genuinely, and still in Italian, _“Soon, I will not resist you, will not resist you, will not resist you...”_

The rest of the duet is a pleasure to play, _Then come, my dear, and let us restore the innocence of love_. For an impromptu performance, the piece must be simple, and the singers confident in it, and Mr. Hoscut’s confidence bleeds over to the young lady by the time the song reaches its climax, so it ends surely and well. The crew claps as vociferously as it had for any wild dance, and when Nunzio has let down his bow to look over Mr. Hoscut is politely inclining his head to the young lady, who is still a remarkable shade of crimson as she curtsies in return. Her eyes keep flickering to the crew, to her indulgent and smirking chaperone, to Nunzio.

It seems the young lady may have a resistance of her own to address. And who can blame her, thinks Nunzio – she is English, and thus has few musical pleasures in her life.

“Signior Hoscut!” Nunzio interrupts before the poor girl has to explain herself. “I had no idea you were a man of many talents. Do you know, what would it be in English, _Oh come to the window?_ ”

“You overestimate me, Mr. Pasqua,” Mr. Hoscut laughs, and turns to the young woman. “And you, Miss Bird, live up to your name. I could not help but join you.”

“You are too kind, sir,” she says, with another curtsy and her face still resolutely down.

Before the girl dies of embarrassment, Nunzio grins and launches into another song – more Mozart, and just as familiar. He will gladly sacrifice the strength in his arm to save the tone of the party, and the lady’s virtue.

*

**3\. Edward Nichols, Second Mate**

The Formosans pose for Spratt while their things are still being loaded, in the open mouth of what is to be their cabin, and Nichols finds it fascinating how easy it is to make them be still. Nichols perches a hand on the back of Spratt’s chair and leans in, but honestly he’s looking more at the subject than the product. They wear bright silks in visible layers, and the woman visible trousers beneath the slits of her robe. He knows enough about the Orient (he thinks) to mark that the young woman is beautiful according to their standards, though he has trouble placing her age, and their relative status according to one another is abundantly clear, as the older gentleman is permitted to sit and the guards are uniformed. The woman casts her eyes about, taking in the bustle of the crew with an appealing nervousness. 

The older gentleman is glowering at Nichols. Presumably, he’s her chaperone – an uncle perhaps, or a grandfather. Let him glower, Nichols thinks. He can do nothing. Whatever these people were on land, they are in Nichols’s kingdom now. 

Spratt captions the sketch _Formosan Royalty._

“Royalty?” Nichols repeats in a whisper, while the chalk still rustles. 

It is about then that down the near stairs comes a piece of work more ornate, and more worth Nichols’s attention, than the young lady.

*

**9\. James Wallace, Surgeon’s Mate**

Jim asks, only half-joking, “How much do I have to pay you to break me in to the Captain’s liquor stores?”

Filip, taking the request completely seriously, answers. 

Jim is going to have a long talk with the purser either way, but he laughs hard and long, and asks instead, “All right; how much if I share?”

*

**57\. Alexander Booth, Seaman**

There is apparently some debate as to whether the elder Peters brother should be buried at sea. They are still in port, after all; Falmouth is probably near enough for the family to travel, and they could have a coroner keep the body in state. But that costs money the Peterses can ill afford, the carpenter says, cold but true. And the body isn’t in much of a state to lie in. 

Alexander helped carry the pulverized corpse up out of the hold, of course. It went cold and lifeless so quickly that by the time he reached the workshop his hands were shaking. Whatever the rites, it needs to be wrapped anyway so it doesn’t leak everywhere. Alexander hangs about awkwardly through the whole process, watching Mr. Smith work and lecture Mr. Gibbs with the businesslike dispassion of a craftsman about which stitches to use, when to lift the head, how to keep the needles clean. It only takes them a quarter of an hour, and then the body isn’t a body anymore, it’s a bundle, and Alexander just watched a person be erased. 

It hasn’t hit him yet, that’s all. The barrels didn’t hit him either. 

“How did it happen, anyway?” Mr. Smith asks, wiping his hands on a scrap of sail. 

The blood he’s cleaning off is also all over Alexander’s clothes, isn’t it. “It was an accident,” he says, and when did his voice get that small? “He shouldn’t have been standing there, that’s all.” 

Mr. Smith nods, and so does Mr. Gibbs, and then they’re both just staring at Alexander while there’s nothing else to say. Below, the others are still cleaning up. The hatches are still open, and their voices echo, up, up, up, sluicing human parts into the bilge. 

Alexander makes it to the corner in time to vomit into a bucket of sawdust. 

By the time he comes to, still heaving, Mr. Smith is kneeling beside him and rubbing his back, and the roaring in Alexander’s ears and throat has crested and subsided to a frothy ache. 

“It’s your first time out, isn’t it, son,” Mr. Smith asks, and Alexander doesn’t have to answer.

*

**35\. Charles Hershtik, Midshipman**

“The Company needs to know,” Mr. Perrott explains, paging through one of Mr. McKay’s ledgers, and Charlie would take notes but all writing implements are on the desk right next to Mr. Perrott and he doesn’t think he should interrupt. Apparently finding the relevant page, Mr. Perrott goes on, “Everything we go through goes through here, and that includes the men.”

Charlie hadn’t even known the man’s name was Samuel. But he nods, and keeps an eye on the page, leaning over Mr. Perrott’s shoulder as it sags from a deep sigh.

“So here he is,” Mr. Perrott points, and Charlie nods again, “and here is where we make note of the incident. It’s the same when someone is injured. Enter the code from this page – you won’t be expected to memorize them – and if there are additional things to report like an instigator or perpetrator, you fill them in here. The doctor, the purser, and a ranking officer must sign off on this, here and here respectively; we’ll go to Doctor Evans once we’re done here, and Mr. McKay has already signed as you can see. And here are young Samuel’s next-of-kin who must be notified. His brother is on board, that’s unusual, but not unheard of, and it does make it easier to determine to whom his effects go. All personal items of note are listed here, and we must fill in his wages – it is considered good form to compensate him for the first leg of the journey, even if he didn’t make it the whole way. If he died valorous in combat, the Company would match the wages upon review of this ledger, but as this was a tragic accident he is only owed for his time. We can also entrust his brother with everything but the official correspondence and the money; that will be mailed once we get to port to resupply, most likely at Casablanca, perhaps Lisbon if the winds are slow. We will leave those sections blank for now.”

Again, Mr. Perrott sighs, and it startles Charlie from the nauseating vortex of words and numbers, in some ways more troubling than a ream of Latin or Greek because he can read each of them individually but they don’t line up quite.

“So impersonal,” Mr. Perrott whispers, and itches his mustache with a knuckle. “Regardless – once this is done, we are to write the letter to his family; the templates for those are in the back of this book. You may copy it, present it to the Captain to sign before supper tonight, and then return it here so Mr. McKay can file it away to post when the time comes.”

“Sir, if I may?”

“You may always ask, Charlie, whatever it is.”

“Why don’t we write a letter from scratch? Wouldn’t that be better for the family to receive?”

Mr. Perrott’s third sigh is even more rattled and deep than the last. “Because it happens all too often, and often all at once.”

*

**44\. Lewis Walker, Topman**

It’s a sea-borne tradition to scare the new blood once there’s no land in sight, but this crew’s been pretty well scared already. So Lewis waits until both Peters the Younger and Booth are on watch above—thank the saints Mr. Miner has some sympathy where Klestil has none—and that means he can get Botteril, O’Hagan, and the two new lascars where he needs them. He even perches on a cannon not too far from the Mids’ cabin so that prig Hershtik can pretend he’s not listening, and keeps his voice just low enough that his audience can still hear the emptiness beyond the hull.

Lewis loves most all of his job, and this part’s no exception.

“Last time, this fell to Hong,” he starts, “and I don’t pretend I know the niceties of what he told ‘em, but they’re all still here, so it must’ve took. And I tell you this knowing we might’ve already given her what she wants, but that’s the gist of what I tell you: _you do not know what she wants._ ”

“The ship?” one of the lascars asks, low and hoarse – Renfred, the one whose hair fits his hat.

“The sea,” Lewis laughs. “What does the sea care what the ship wants?”

O’Hagan tsks and crosses his arms – _let him,_ Lewis thinks, you’d think an Irishman would have respect for faerie tales – but the others settle in, inching forward or settling back as suits their fancy and the shadows the lantern emblazons on near iron and dark wood. It swings, gently as a babe in its cradle but with the faint familiar scrape of its well-trod path on the wall.

“If you thought this was just about our _Obra Dinn_ , you’ve got no sense of it,” he starts. “I’ve sailed on four ships, under six captains, since year two of the Seven Years’ War. And that’s not the only war I’ve served in, nor the only one I’m going to if the French winds don’t change. But no matter what evil I’ve seen men do it is nothing, _nothing,_ compared to the hunger of the sea itself.

“And the worst of it is that that hunger isn’t evil. Some years ago, in Ceylon it was, I watched a snake eat a man. Was the snake evil? No, just hungry. Snakes’ got to eat too, and the way the snake saw it Adam’d gone too far into the jungle on some fool errand, and should he have died? Not just from being a fool, not if there’s a just God in this world. But if there is a just God, he’s got no rule on the sea.

“So I’ll tell you what someone told me, back when I was as fresh as you lot: _you do not know what she wants._

“Some two hundred years ago, there was a ship, name of _Calpurnia_. She’d done her part holding off the Spaniards, but she’d lost officers doing it, and Queen Bess Herself recommissioned her and chose her a new captain when the war-that-wasn’t was done. But this were the days when you didn’t have to call yourself a sailor to get yourself a ship, and the Captain she chose might have done well enough in English waters but didn’t know what he’d be facing when there was nothing but the horizon to face.

“Her new Captain’s first trip out was to take her to Cape Town, and as I’ve heard it told the new Captain cheered when he found out. He took _Calpurnia_ down the same route we’re going, and set out with the Queen’s blessing, a crew of a hundred souls, and a cargo of gold and wine freshly won from Spain.

“Now this was the days when if no one heard from a ship for a year, no one batted an eye. But a second year passed, then three, then four, and it wasn’t Cape Town she come too after that but off Lisbon, not far at all from where she set. And all that drove her was a helmsman, little more than bones and wind keeping him aloft.

“The harbormates come out to meet her called over the side, _Oi,_ ” Lewis raises his voice only a little, “ _oi, let us guide you in, give you a hand, just lower a rope, or trim the sails at least._ They were speaking Portuguese, but the helmsman croaked _No, no,_ over and over, and didn’t budge from the helm.

“The Portuguese had to climb the hull like lizards, but they did it. And the first ones over stopped in their tracks when they saw what had become of the deck, and warned the others, _Don’t step down! No, no!_

“The sludge on the deck might have once been blood. Or it might have been pitch, or thick as, or both. It was boiling in the sun, black and wet, stinking of rot. And there were corpses there too, some face-down in the stuff like they’d drowned, others baking belly-up, some in pieces and some whole as can be but mired in sludge so thick they might have been two men melded together like insects when they mate. And looking at the windows as they climbed the hull, the Portuguese saw more of those dead faces pressed against the windows, more of that pitch leaking out the ports, a thick black rime wherever light should be.

“And the helmsman? He wasn’t chained to the wheel so much as _stuck_ before it, up to his knees in the devilry.”

A faint gasp pierces the silence through the wall of the Mids’ cabin. So Hershtik _is_ listening. Good.

Lewis goes on, making sure to meet the lantern-glassy eyes of each of the new men in turn. “They did manage to make her stop, and anchor her far enough offshore that whatever this was didn’t touch port. And they sent a doctor to the helmsman, who knocked him out and sawed him off at the knees. You’d think a man would be bitter losing both his legs like that, but the helmsman, I’m told, he sobbed with relief and laughed for hours, telling the tale.

“He didn’t live long enough for someone who spoke enough English to write down his whole story. But the pieces the Portuguese got from him told a tale all their own. The Spanish gold was gone. The wine was transformed like the blood of Christ. There was no battle but there’d been a leak, an endless sucking sound in the hold, like meat out the shell of a crab, and whenever the Captain sent a man to plug it up he didn’t come back. They kept sailing in circles. The stars were wrong. He kept saying that, the stars were wrong. 

“And helmsman’s last words were _maybe this will be enough_.”

Botteril hisses a breath in through his teeth, his shoulders quaking just a little. “Enough for who?”

“Exactly,” Lewis says. “The Captain? The Queen? The ship? God? No one knows, and no one cares to. But the only one who could have taken all that, the only one who gained anything from this was the sea, and that’s what I choose to believe. She has a hunger. She has rules of her own, and there is no God out here but her, and you do not know what she wants, and she doesn’t give a damn about you.

“I don’t pretend there’s a moral to this, seeing as I don’t know the story. For all I know it might have been pirates, or a whale, or a sickness, or the Captain not knowing what he’s at, or all of them killed the crew. And maybe the tar or blood or whatever it was was just the grime of a ship with only one man on it, years overdue to come to port. But if there’s a point to take at all, it’s that we don’t know, and never will, and all you can do out here is take that to heart. You do not know. You do not know _anything_ about the world you’re in now, except that you don’t matter to the sea. You’re here defying every law of reason that we know. You’re walking on water, and you’re no son of God, because there is no God here.”

“And what are we supposed to do,” O’Hagan scoffs in the dark, “trust _you?_ ”

He’s not the first to say this to Lewis, so Lewis laughs, just long enough to flash his teeth where O’Hagan can see. “Who else have you got out here?”

*

**23\. Bun-Lan Lim, Passenger**

If Bun-Lan is being honest with herself, which (smiling, she thinks) she should be, she felt more “at sea” in London than she ever has at sea. Of her thirty-four years, she has spent near half of them in transit from one place to another; between Formosa and the mainland, so much in her youth; to the Islands, to India, to Arabia, to Zanzibar, to the European colonies in the far south of Africa, more than once; and now to Europe itself and coming home again. Her family is in favor at court once more, though that may well change by the time she arrives. The chest may well assure it, if Beng does right. Court will be strange. Land will be strange. Here, with bare wood walls and the lilt of the sea, it is familiar, and she could be anywhere.

Perhaps it is how the sea people feel, in their world beneath this one. Surely they have countries and cities as well, and surely there are those among them who are more at home _between_ than _in_. Fear singes her heart, to think that those wanderers might come here, if the chest is ever opened and the shells allowed to speak.

“You are sure the chest is sealed,” she asks, or half-asks.

“As sealed as it can be, my lady,” Beng says, not looking up from his book. “Their call is too high to be heard above water.”

Bun-Lan nods, and then thinks aloud, “But what are they calling?”

“Each other,” he answers.

That, Bun-Lan also understands. After all, the sea has been calling her for years.

*

**32\. Davey James, Steward to the Fourth Mate**

It is his first time setting up for dinner in the Captain’s Quarters, and it’ll be his first time serving at it tonight, and Davey knows he should be paying acute attention to Where Things Go. But the others are making it so difficult – Rod with his whistling, and Filip with his _stories_ , and Samuel just putting things where they go and not giving Davey time to see how he does it – so Davey just ends up standing there slack-jawed with the silver case in his arms while his seniors bustle around and joke and laugh and lay the service on the table fork by fork. 

“And they don’t sleep,” Filip goes on, folding another napkin. “There’s always one on guard down in the hold, and another wherever the lady is.”

“If they spoke English at all I’d wonder if the Captain was trying to spy on us,” Samuel says with a roll of his eyes. He reaches into Davey’s silver case for another knife, wipes it on his apron and sets it next to a plate. 

Rod stops whistling to trill his judgment – “Convoluted!” – and then goes right back to wiping the inside of his next glass. 

“Still entirely possible,” Samuel says, somehow already two knives further than he was. “My cousin on the _Numa_ said that the Bosun passed off some agents as Polish passengers when they were actually there to root out thieves in the crew.”

“Poles, though,” Rod points out. “You can fake being Polish. You can’t fake being Chinese if you’re not.”

“But you _can_ fake not being able to speak English,” Filip says, flicking out another napkin.

“He speaks from experience,” Samuel tells Davey, with another roll of his eyes and another flourish of yet another knife.

Filip laughs and grins, and starts that napkin over. “I do! Three years ago, I think, there was this American—”

The door slaps the wall behind him, and Davey sees the chaos unspool almost before it happens. Rod steps aside to make room for whoever just walked in, backing into Samuel’s shoulder – Samuel drops the knife he’d been cleaning and jumps back, bumping the table – the table hits Filip in the chest, and he instinctively pushes it off in the other direction, which is _right for Davey_ , who ducks, and the entire case of silver flies up into Rod’s face, which means the glass he was holding crashes down right next to Davey’s head, and breaks, scoring his cheek. 

Paul – who is, of course, the one who just walked in on this – immediately rushes to Davey’s side and kicks away the silver that’s in the way of him kneeling. “Are you all right, boy?”

Davey nods. It only hurts a little, though that might change once he can breathe again. 

Paul nods, and helps him to his feet, sparing a rueful glance down at the mess. “Which one of you buffoons forgot to lock the table legs?”

Rod looks at Filip, who looks at Samuel, who says far too quickly, “That’s Sebastian’s job.” 

“In case you forgot,” Paul says, glowering as he presses a handkerchief to Davey’s cheek, “Davey is the new Sebastian. Emphasis on _new_.”

Samuel and Filip sigh, but only Filip apologizes; Rod is already sweeping up the broken glass, and looks balefully up at Davey with a visible wince. 

Paul pats Davey’s shoulders again, and asks him, “Can you get down to Evans on your own?”

Again, Davey nods. 

“Speak up,” Paul reminds him gently. “These clowns will forget you’re here otherwise.”

“Yessir,” Davey manages. 

“Good. Now off with you.”

Davey scurries out the door just as Paul starts to let Samuel really have it.

*

**55\. Hamadou Diom, Seaman**

A fight breaks out while Hamadou is shaving his head. 

He doesn’t have to be paying more than one ear’s worth of attention to know that it’s Nathan Peters who started it. Nathan hasn’t been sleeping; no one in their corner has, and Hamadou can guess why, and the answer to that is also Nathan Peters. 

Hamadou doesn’t blame Nathan in the least for his distress; loss makes bastards of most, and scoundrels of some. But between Nathan’s agitation, Lars’s tossing, and the faint screeching whine that seems to come from directly beneath their floorboards, Hamadou is not sleeping well either. 

Just to be safe, he puts the razor away until the fighting is done. Naked steel does an angry man no favors.

*

**50\. John Naples, Seaman**

A common enemy boosts morale.

At sea, however, the most common enemy is boredom.

So Jack is not surprised when Mr. Wolff announces a shooting contest – the prize, double rum rations for everyone who shoots better than him and a quid for whoever does best – and Jack thinks, sure, why not, nothing to lose but dignity and rum that wasn’t his to begin with anyway. 

The target gets itself strung up, a man’s silhouette painted on a spare board, dangling from the foremast, and the Brown Besses laid out, with Wiater looming over them like an owl. Jack volunteers to help in the reloading line until his turn comes up, because it never hurts to kiss Wiater’s arse, and he finds himself put to work as the contest begins.

Mr. Wolff’s barometer shot takes the target in the right shoulder, and that sets a pattern of boasting and idiocy that Jack has to admit has definitely bettered the winds on deck. One of the Russians lands a kneecap; Walker gets in a gut-shot; Mr. Wallace gets cajoled into it, misses spectacularly, and laughs, saying he’ll be here if anyone does any worse. Hal Brennan of course gets one in, a solid blow to the left thigh just shy of the groin, and surprisingly enough Mr. Smith comes up from the workshop to take a turn and doesn’t do half bad either, clipping the head.

None of the three Mids make it, though Mr. Lanke comes closest, hitting the board but not the silhouette; Mr. Nichols insists on using his pistol instead of a Bess, and does about as well. Akbar hits an ankle, Linde the same one a little closer to the foot. A few more misses from the more boarding-inclined among the crew – Maba, in particular, though he also laughs about it and says he’ll practice – and one more hit, Jie Zhang to the left arm, and it’s Jack’s turn.

He takes the gun he’d been working on, gets into position, lines up his shot, and explodes the stock right next to his face.

After an hour of stitching, cleaning, and repair (thanks, Wallace, you came in useful after all), Jack thinks he’ll be sticking to swords for a while.

*

**58\. Patrick O’Hagan, Seaman**

Bilge duty is what happens when you get on Klestil’s bad side, they said.

Don’t get on Klestil’s bad side, they said.

Not Patrick’s fault that Klestil doesn’t _have_ a good side.

The bilge is by its very nature a rotten place, and no matter the scented canvas Patrick’s wrapped around his jaw and nose the reek pierces clean through. If a smell could be made solid this would be spines and thorns and the perverse cloying sweetness of old shit, and it pokes its way into Patrick’s skin and eyes like those needles he’s seen one of the topmen use on another when he wrenched a shoulder.

This is not what Patrick signed up for. See the world, they said. Make good money, they said.

He’s getting off this bloody boat at the next opportunity. Damn the commission. And damn Klestil.

*

**43\. Maba, Topman**

Gul is not up to sparring today, so Maba drills alone. It is known among the crew that this time is _his_ , and he requires a wide berth. Thin English and French sabers and Maba’s bolo do not match well, and though he’s learned enough to use them in the event he is disarmed Maba much prefers slashing to stabbing. Furthermore, Maba being left-handed has been called “unfair” by the swordsmen of the crew more than once, and so he frankly prefers the lack of criticism.

He launches into a maneuver he’s used before, though this time the opponent is remembered and imagined; a particularly hardy French pirate this ship engaged two years ago, off the coast of Madagascar. He’d held two knives, perplexingly, and knew how to use both of them. Maba almost lost an eye getting under the swipe of the left one to cut the man down. So he shuts his eyes and rehearses the sweep, over and over; duck, lunge, twist, backhand. Duck, lunge, twist, backhand.

“He was larger than you, yes?” an old man laughs from not far off. The older Formosan gentleman.

It is no surprise to Maba that the older Formosan gentleman is willing to share his skills. Many elders are, especially those far from home. It is somewhat surprising that he speaks Maba’s language – though, less a surprise than a welcome thrill – and particularly surprising that he guesses it aright on the first try. Maba laughs as well, and prides himself on not being out of breath at all. “Many men are, sir. Many pirates, especially.”

The older Formosan gentleman comes away from the goat-pens, and nearer, though he still affords Maba practice space. “I do not know that last word, young one.”

Maba repeats it, and the older gentleman nods; Maba then tries it in English, _especially_ ; the older gentleman shakes his head, so Maba says, “It doesn’t matter. You speak it well.”

“And you fight well. You fight many large men. I remember this also.”

Maba looks the older gentleman over, taking in his stance and how unbent he is for one of his apparent age. Yes, this man would remember fighting people larger than he, possibly even his fair share of greedy Frenchmen. Choosing his words carefully so as not to offend, he says, “Fighting well then is why you are here now.”

The older gentleman laughs, exposing his throat. “Yes! And you too will become old if you practice. But,” he tries, and then slows down as he apparently searches out the words in Maba’s language rather than his own, “you cut down and up. They see that,” he emphasizes _see_ in the way that makes it clear to Maba that he means _expect_.

Shaking his head, though he doesn’t mean to disrespect an elder, Maba points out, “Europeans stab.”

The older gentleman shakes his head. “One hand. You use two.”

Maba thinks about it a moment, as the idea coalesces into his body. He looks the older gentleman in the eyes, then nods, and braces in a low guard that has the heel of his right hand braced behind his left on the bolo’s grip.

“Yes,” the older gentleman says first in his own language, then Maba’s. “Good. They cannot do that,” he gestures to the bolo’s grip, “theirs are like bowls, or too small. They think you will cut down, and instead you stab. It will surprise them.”

After making sure he has enough space, Maba repeats the shape of the maneuver, ending with an upward stab instead of an upward slash. It’s unwieldy, but it does seem to work.

Another language and another laugh cuts in to the session – the gravel-rich voice of Captain Witterel. “Maba! Stand down.”

“Sir,” Maba says automatically, and straightens up, sword at his side.

“Not around the passengers,” Captain Witterel says, emerging from his cabin at a clip. The misunderstanding is unfair but understandable; the Captain knows very well that the crew gives Maba a wide berth when he’s practicing, but it’s not his fault if the passenger interrupted of his own volition.

The older gentleman is laughing. He puts up his hands as if to soothe the Captain while there’s still distance between them. “Not problem,” he says in English, then turns to Maba with a bright smile and says, in Maba’s language, “You may explain, young one.”

Maba’s English has come a long way these three years on the _Obra Dinn_ , but he still feels awkward addressing the officers with it so piecemeal by comparison. “The gentleman is a teacher,” he explains. “He saw my practice and wants to help.”

Captain Witterel looks between the two of them, more than once, and his features school from cautious anger into the longer lines of tempered curiosity. “Mr. Sia is a swordsman?” the Captain asks Maba, who nods.

The older gentleman – Mr. Sia, rather – clearly gets the gist of this, because he extends his hand to Maba in an unambiguous gesture.

When a favored elder asks you for your weapon, you give over your weapon. Maba passes the bolo to him, and stands aside, gone all the way to the goat pens.

Mr. Sia, after testing the weight, performs a few truly elegant, slow maneuvers, almost more like he’s painting than fighting. In the cloud-bracketed light from overhead, no sharpness reflects off the blade, just the raw grey edge in its utilitarian beauty. And Mr. Sia’s movements, though slow, are economical and steady, never overbalancing no matter how many feet he stands on, how many hands touch the grip.

When Mr. Sia comes to a stop, the three men aren’t the only ones in this area of the deck, and Maba’s solo practice time is forgotten: Brennan, leaning at the base of the mizzen, claps his hands, his broad face grinning with awe. “That’s amazing, sir! Hong, tell him that’s amazing.”

“He can understand that,” Hong says from just above him in the rigging. But he does say something lengthier in Chinese, and Mr. Sia smiles and responds in turn.

Mr. Sia bows to the Captain, the quick semi-deferential kind, and then enters an open guard – a stance that Maba _knows_ is meant to start a match.

Captain Witterel looks over either shoulder quickly, but the confusion abates just as quick and he huffs out the sort of disbelieving laugh he’s been known for when a member of his crew speaks out of turn but wittily, like with the aforementioned French pirates. “I have no wish to cause a liability.”

Overhead, Hong translates that, and Mr. Sia says something lengthier. Hong repeats to the Captain, “Only the swords, sir. To disarm, not to hurt. Mr. Sia is careful and trusts you have control.”

“Well then,” Captain Witterel says, and the nearby crew erupts into cheers.

Since Maba is closest, when the Captain hands off his coat and hat, Maba receives them, and backs away. The Captain needs as wide a berth as Maba does; on days when he and Mr. Hoscut or Mr. Davies spar, they’ve been known to take over the entire deck. Captain Witterel is a fairly large man, with a head on Mr. Sia, and his saber twice as long as Maba’s bolo, though half its weight. They will certainly need at least from here to the forecastle, and already Mr. Miner is making sure that none of the seamen get too close.

Before the duel even starts, the crowd thickens, and the topmen above swoop down from one crossbar to another to get a closer look. Captain Witterel draws into his opening stance, and Mr. Sia his, with one word, in Maba’s language, over his shoulder:

“Watch.”

Mr. Sia springs into action, twice as fast as he was in demonstration, and Captain Witterel’s parry is a blur, startled and defensive. Mr. Sia whirls under the Captain’s next strike, under his guard, and soon they’re almost too fast to track, the pinging of blade on blade and the thud of the Captain’s boots a hair too late compared to the movements themselves. The fighters are well-matched even if the weapons aren’t, and since they’re not trying to kill each other there’s an eerie stateliness to the strikes, as schooled as the expression on Mr. Sia’s face.

Not Captain Witterel’s, though. Captain Witterel’s brows are drawn tight, his teeth breathing the set of his jaw when his strikes are deflected. He is ever forward, like most English, dominant arm and dominant side always ahead to protect the rest – Mr. Sia turns his back only to whip around the other way, with a speed that belies his apparent age as he switches off whether the bolo requires one hand or two. He is used to a lighter sword, Maba realizes; lighter, but no longer.

A quick bit of footwork has the Captain pressing his advantage, and a cheer crests through the crew; Maba keeps watching as the Captain feints right, is blocked by the flat of the bolo, and lunges forward with a growl to try and grab Mr. Sia’s wrist—

—and Mr. Sia, smiling evenly, mirrors Maba’s pattern, duck, lunge, twist, _up_ , but with the grip of the bolo, not the blade.

The blunt force connects with Captain Witterel’s armpit, and he yelps, dropping the saber, which Mr. Sia steps on as he draws back, the cradle of the guard under his heel. A gust and gasp runs through the crowd, and the start of applause is stifled, awaiting Captain Witterel’s reaction.

Perhaps Maba is the only one close enough to see the candid anger and disbelief in the Captain’s black eyes. 

Regardless, the moment passes, and the Captain, palms up, concedes with a short bow. Applause and cheers resume – though with a fair bit of muttering and hushed whispers boiling beneath – and the Captain laughs, extending his hand to take the sword back. “I should suspend my rule, then,” he says, the picture of gracious defeat were it not for the lingering heat in his eyes. “Maba, you may practice with Mr. Sia whenever he is again so generous.”

“Thank you, sir,” Maba says, quietly.

Mr. Sia has gathered the saber into his grasp and extends it, hilt-first, to the Captain with another, less deferent bow. Captain Witterel reclaims it, and then his hat and coat, then looks about at the lingering crew. “Mr. Miner, if you would have these men resume their duties,” he orders rather than asks, and shrugs into his coat, perceptibly favoring his left arm.

Mr. Miner chides everyone back to their places; maba, whose place was here, remains as he is, watching Mr. Sia’s eyes follow the Captain as he leaves, gone below.

“Did you see?” Mr. Sia asks Maba, in his own language again, but without the glittering humor of earlier.

“Yes,” Maba answers. “I did see.”

*

**15\. Olus Wiater, Gunner’s Mate**

That awful monkey is no longer permitted in the Gunner’s Stores for a very good reason.

*

**37\. Timothy Butement, Topman**

Accidents in the rigging are a fact of life at sea. Accidents in the rigging that happen when one is showing off for gawping passengers are, if not a fact, a cautionary tale that must happen often enough for the rest of the men above to tell Tim so in at least five languages. (The ladies had a good laugh, so it was worth it, but he’ll have a strain in his shoulder from that emergency catch for weeks.) 

Regardless, Tim resolves to wrap his ankle more carefully next time.

*

**38\. Huang Li, Topman**

There is a terrible smell coming from the main cargo bay, the purser says. Whoever discerns its origin will receive a bonus, amount to be determined. Not that Huang trusts the purser as far as he can be thrown, but money is money, and Huang suspects that he will not be receiving any additional pay for interpreting on behalf of Miss Lim and her attendants. So here he is, below, on his off-watch. It had better be worth it. 

He is mindful with his lantern as he shuts the hatch above him; there is already some light down here, as Mr. Tan is guarding the passenger cargo. Huang bows with due deference as he passes, and Mr. Tan inclines his head in response. The Court dialect that Mr. Tan and his charges use might as well be English to Huang, but politeness is universal.

There are hundreds of barrels and crates and spare coils of rope carrying their particular scents, and the particular humidity of being under the very thing that’s carrying you, but nothing smells awful just yet. Huang holds his lantern as near the cargo as he dares, minding the hood and its fire, and pokes around thusly for several minutes until it occurs to him that he might smell better with his other senses unoccupied. He hoods the lantern completely – Mr. Tan looks at him askance as it goes dark—

—and in the relative darkness there is a sound, somewhere between a hiss and a screech, or a kettle just begun to steam. Faint, but present, and quite clearly coming from within the passenger hold that Mr. Tan is guarding. 

Immediately, Huang is put in mind of the scrape of a knife on the thin bones of an eel as it is split lengthwise. 

Huang looks up into the shadows around Mr. Tan’s brow. There is a faint twitch at the corner of his eye as Huang catches it, and a gulping pulse in his throat as he says nothing. 

Huang turns around and gives up on the search immediately. Whatever is going on down here is none of his business, and not worth the pittance the purser probably won’t give him anyway.

*

**8\. Henry Evans, Surgeon**

When their duties and the watch permit, Doctor Evans has tea with Sathi once a week. The Tamil of Doctor Evans’s childhood is rusty, he claims; Sathi protests otherwise, and to be frank, welcomes the chance to speak his own language with someone over whom he is not directly responsible. He likes to think he and the doctor have, if not something in common, an uncommon commonality. Doctor Evans, while not a peer, not in the least, is in the unenviable no-man’s-land as goes the _Obra Dinn:_ not an officer, quite, but the paragon of his role in this bottled world. Sathi feels more or less the same, as the man who, essentially, serves the passengers, and is thus not truly Of the crew. Neither fish nor fowl, either of them, though in Sathi’s mind Doctor Evans is the greater creature whatever his taxonomy. Sathi talks to the crew very little, though his countrymen on it look to him occasionally, especially those fresh out of the lascar house. 

Though those opportunities too, may be lessened still, with Syed and Rajub now gone. 

The tea has brewed; Doctor Evans mixes in goat’s milk, which will do, and pours. His set is sturdy, and carries heat well, and Sathi folds his hands about the cup and brings it to his lips. It is a properly potent spiced blend, heavy on the loose cardamom, not the Chinese style the English prefer. It immediately calls to mind the markets of Sathi’s youth. It is, almost certainly, intentional. 

“Tell me that this is not to spread any further,” Sathi says in Tamil, steel over steam. 

“It ought not,” Doctor Evans says, with clear earnestness and a heavy sigh. “The two of them are new. Were, new. The disease was borne at the House and made worse by the cold.”

Sathi nods, though the words are little comfort. “If it is your belief that the crew and the passengers are not in danger, I would trust your judgment.”

The curling vapor from his cup beads on Doctor Evans’s mustaches. “And you are well?”

Sathi nods. “But what about you, sir?”

“No more than strain,” Doctor Evans demurs. “And your charges?”

“The ladies are well,” Sathi says, and blows a quick gust on the tea before he sips it while he considers the rest. “Mr. Pasqua, also. Our Formosan guests as ever keep to themselves, but Mr. Sia has some Hindustani, which does him well enough, and he would be able to tell me if something is wrong. Or you, sir, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Doctor Evans says, though his brow knots into the steam. “I cannot help but worry.”

A watch ticks, out of rhythm with the tossing of the ship. Doctor Evans places his hand over his breast, and the sound is muffled. 

Perhaps it is the comfort of this tea that smells of home, or the relief that, if Doctor Evans is right, only two of his charges will be lost, and these already gone, but Sathi smiles. “Presumptuously, sir, I understand. I do not envy you your job. Unlike in mine, you must accept failure. It must be difficult.”

Doctor Evans, who had been in the midst of a gulp of tea, nearly chokes on a cardamom pod. 

When the coughing fit is done, Sathi laughs with him. But a shroud yet hangs over the surgery, as it draped over two men this English world calls lascars, dead in cold, strange waters.

*

**12\. Thomas Sefton, Cook**

That blasted monkey is not permitted in the galley either. For _everyone’s_ sake.

*

**45\. Leonid Volkov, Topman**

“This is not a matter to discuss over cards,” Aleksei says, his breath mostly smoke. The words sink low where the smoke does not, lurking in the shadow of the pipe. “I don’t bring it up lightly.”

Leonid raises an eyebrow. It then occurs to him that Aleksei may not see this in the dark, so he says, “I’m listening.” 

“You’ve seen the golden chest,” Aleksei says, even lower, because the smoke that would hide it has already curled up into the stars. After that, he says nothing: even if no one else on the ship speaks Russian, it will not do to discuss crime in anything more than innuendo. Leonid learned his lessons in that long ago, which is why he has not since been home. 

Leonid is not stupid, and neither is Aleksei, for all that he is about to run a fool’s errand; this is a heavy matter indeed, and Leonid, at first, does naught but look up at the black clouds and consider. That Aleksei brings this up in Russian means that whatever it is, Alarcus is also already aware, and in on the scheme. Leonid does the math the situation requires: three to carry the chest, two to man the lifeboat, someone capable of navigating, a ringleader to think it’s worth it, and that ringleader high enough up in the ranks to access the passenger cargo hold. Not either of the Austrians – Wolff is a priss and Klestil is incorruptible – nor Hoscut, he’s got everything to lose, and Perrott nothing to gain. All of which only applies if they’re just stealing the chest, never mind the Formosans themselves. 

“Two or Four?” he asks eventually. 

“Two,” Aleksei answers. 

Leonid laughs through is nose, once, then wipes it away with the back of his hand. “Then no. It’s not worth it. You shouldn’t go either.”

Aleksei shrugs and takes another drag on his pipe. This time, the smoke lingers like a personal fog at the level of his eyes. Fine. “But if you tell anyone, I will know.” 

Leonid has been there, has been Aleksei in this. Crime does pay, often enough for fools to keep trying at it. If the young man is lucky, but not _too_ lucky, he will survive the venture and become an old fool like Leonid. And if he is not lucky, well, he is a young fool. 

He claps Aleksei on the back and pats it twice. The smoke dissipates in the chill air. Thereafter, they have nothing to say to one another, and resume their watches on an endless grey sea.

*

**26\. Hok-Seng Lau, Passenger**

The Captain asks if Hok-Seng committed the murder; Hong, interpreting, asks Hok-Seng _if the murder was his fault._

Of course the murder was Hok-Seng’s fault; he is a guard, and he was there, and he did not prevent it.

So he tells them so.

*

**42\. Nicholas Botteril, Topman**

From up in the rigging, it is easy to pretend that the execution is happening somewhere else.

It’s a play, almost, like the ones Nick’s brother does back in London. It’s spaced out like theater, all the main players at the front of their groups, the condemned hanging above and alone, the Formosans shouting and no one understanding and Mr. Miner holding them back as the shots are fired. Someone’s shot strikes true – from up here, it’s impossible to tell whose – and honestly nothing is different. No one moves from his spot, and if there are fine details like flinching or gasping or hiding one’s eyes, they’re not the sort of thing an audience would see, and Nick is just that. An audience. Not part of this.

Besides, up at this height, he sees the groups shift, strongmen clustering around the wailing Formosan lady, tradesmen gone back to their business, stewards coming to fetch their masters for one reason or another.

And amid that group, Nick sees, from his perch, his figurative Royal Box, the slow distinct nod that passes from Mr. Nichols to Li Hong. They haven’t moved from their places, as still as islands on the roiling deck, just as tied to their places as the dangling corpse.

Nick will say nothing of this.

*

**30\. Samuel Galligan, Steward to the Second Mate**

The chest barks his knee as they load it into the boat, and nearly pitches him over. It’s too heavy. They’ll have to take two boats.

*

**34\. Thomas Lanke, Midshipman**

Charlie rolls his eyes so pointedly it’s a wonder they’re still in his head. “That’s scut work,” he says, his piggy little nose in a curl. 

“Not hardly,” Tom says, setting the rope back down. It’s almost right, he thinks; he could loop the bight a few more times and the noose would look neater, but it’s functional. Probably. He starts undoing it for the fifth time tonight. “Just because you see the scuts do it doesn’t mean it’s all theirs.”

Pete, helpfully, looks down from his bunk, book perched in an open bridge on his chest. “He’s right, Charlie. You can’t drink with them, but you can still drink. It’s like that.”

Tom agrees, mostly, but getting the knot undone and redone is more important. It’s got to be _in_ his hands, memorized, if it’s to be of any use at all. Not that he plans on hanging people on the regular, but he should know how the knot is made. It starts with a complicated S curve, then the bight, then the wind... 

So maybe nooses have been on the brain since they executed that Formosan murderer. 

So maybe he wonders how it feels. Not to be a murderer – he’d never! – but how it would feel to be hanged. Someone grabbed him by the throat once in a fight back at school and that hurt like hell, but this is different. Would be, different. Poets say flying is as close as you get to freedom. Is hanging as close as you get to flying?

He makes the base of the knot, again, and loops the working end around and around, as neat as he can. 

“Still,” Charlie says, over on his side of the room, a little defensive. “Won’t someone be there to do it for you?”

“Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how it’s done,” Pete says, before Tom can get to it. It was, more or less, what he was going to say. Instead he’s tied a noose. 

They hung – hanged? Is it still a hanging if it’s not the fall that killed him? – hanged a man and shot him where he swung, not a day ago. On this ship. Just about everyone watched it happen. He’s still hanging there, with that hood on his head, a warning to the rest. Tom’s seen his fair share of dead men, but never their faces. Wallace and Doctor Evans hand them off to whatever crew is handy. The crew takes them to the workshop for wrapping. If Charlie wants to complain about scut work, it’s not the work of the ones who tie the knots, it’s the ones who clean the corpses, and is it really scut if you have to be trained how to do it? Anyone can lift a corpse, but not anyone can stand to see it. Or smell it. 

Tom holds the noose in his hands, running his thumbs along the rope. It’s better than the last few, neater. _You have to know the difference,_ he thinks. 

When next he looks up, both Pete and Charlie are staring at him. “What difference?” Charlie asks. 

Damn, Tom must have said that aloud. “Between a noose and a knot,” he says, and then realizes how incomplete that is only after. “I mean, a noose is a knot. But you can’t just hang someone on a bowline. Even if the rope is thick. You saw how Walker tied it, right?” He leans forward enough to hold up his own where Charlie can see from across the cabin. “He took his time. It’s meant to hold weight. And not pull loose after.” 

Charlie looks visibly disturbed; Pete, up on his bunk, has given up on the book for now apparently, draped over the edge so his head’s almost on level with Tom’s, upside-down. “How much weight?”

“Enough to break the fall, I suppose,” Tom guesses. “People weigh more when they’re dead.”

Charlie contests that, and Pete of course gets into it with him because he’s been hanging around with Wallace lately and all, and soon enough the argument is the same as it ever is between boys from Eton and Charterhouse. But Tom sits there contemplating the noose for a while longer. That Formosan murderer was the biggest of the lot, twice Tom’s weight at least. One strand of rope held him up like a bird-feeder. It took three men to lift him up there in the first place. It barely adds up. 

For a moment, the creaking of the _Obra Dinn _drowns out Charlie and Pete’s bickering, and beyond that the whisper of the sea. Experimentally, Tom loops the noose around his own neck. It hangs almost like a cravat. The rope is as thick as his two smallest fingers together, but tight it could hold him up as surely as the Formosan murderer—__

__—and tight it becomes, when Pete’s dangling arm grabs the loose end to taunt Charlie with, and gives it a yank._ _

__It’s nothing like flying. Pete didn’t even pull all that hard, but the _angle_ is wrong, or right, _right_ , he’s up on the bunk and Tom’s lurching forward with the jaunt of the ship as the rope bites into the cartilage of his throat. Panic wells up red and hot at the corners of his eyes. Charlie, across the room, looks like a gutted fish. _ _

__“Get under,” someone, Pete, is yelling at him, between invective and apology and panic and the tangling of their hands and the rope around Tom’s neck, “get them _under_ —”_ _

__Pete’s hand wedges beneath the rope, his palm flat to Tom’s neck. It’s _freezing_. When Tom’s wits come back to him – and several harsh gulps of air – he rams his fingers between his neck and the noose too. He focuses on Petes forehead. His eyes are hard and wide, somehow creeping up into the fringe of his hair while Tom’s breath still comes short. It’s cramped and tight and yes, a little bit like falling where he stands, his field of vision getting smaller and smaller like the world must to a bird above the clouds. _ _

__“Charlie, get a knife,” Pete says, and Charlie immediately fumbles to obey._ _

__Seconds that feel like hours later, Charlie slices through the noose, so close and so careful that Tom can smell the sweat on his hands. The ends of the rope fall to the deck, and Pete and Charlie step back, give Tom some room to breathe._ _

__After the initial apologies, they don’t talk about it at all._ _

__Getting dressed in the morning, Tom discovers that his uniform collar is high enough that what little red remains looks like nothing but sunburn, and there’s a thin raised scrape from Charlie cutting him loose that stings a bit against the coarse cloth._ _

__After that, they find out that Nichols fled in the night, taking two of the Formosans with him. Idiocy matters considerably less._ _

____

*

**17\. Finley Dalton, Helmsman**

“Scream if you need to,” Doctor Evans tells him. That Finley can feel the doctor’s hands at all is probably a good thing, but that’s all that’s good about having a spear in your thigh.

It’s going to be worse coming out. The frame of Finley’s sight has already gone red but he’s still seeing things in pinpoint: Wallace kneeling on his right, pressing down hard on his thigh, Sathi pinning his arms at his side, Hal Brennan looming overhead grasping the spear, and Doctor Evans with a lamp and what looks like an axe the size of a teaspoon, red hot.

“Hold him fast, please, Sathi, Jim. Count of three, men: One. Two. Three—”

Finley yells, of course. Starts with “Fuck Nichols!” at the top of his lungs, even. And then keeps yelling whatever comes to mind as Doctor Evans applies the cautery to the edges of the wound.

The pain was already excruciating; the new pain doesn’t bear remarking on.

When Finley stops screaming, Brennan is laughing, the shithead, and Wallace has on a grin a league wide, and Sathi’s let him go and is standing off to the side with eyes like telescope lenses. But Doctor Evans is all business, looking over the result, and nods, twice, quick. “All right, we can move you now. Brennan, bring that to Wiater and get us some rum if you don’t mind. He won’t bleed out, but there’s to be a lot to clean.”

“Yessir,” Brennan says, flourishing the spear a little to shake Finley’s blood onto the deck in a weird little arc. He raises his eyebrow down at Finley and repeats, “ _In the arse with the wrong end of his own gun so he can shoot Galligan while they fuck,_ eh, Mr. Dalton?”

“Off with you,” Doctor Evans chides, but he’s laughing, and the red frame in Finley’s vision is whiter than it was, or just wetter, he’s not sure, but either way the world’s starting to spin. “You’ll be fine, Mr. Dalton,” Doctor Evans says, turning that port-keeled smile on him, “let’s just get you below.”

They, Sathi and Wallace and the doctor, they all help him to his feet, well, to his foot, he’s not putting the one of them down just yet. But when he looks up at the stars, they start to spin, to froth like the sea...

*

**49\. Lars Linde, Seaman**

Linde’s snoring’s gotten worse since he got knocked on the head. Worse enough it’s keeping Nathan awake. Worse enough it drowns out the _Obra Dinn_ herself. Worse enough that Nathan almost misses the chattering Russians, now there’s only one of them, because at least they’d sound less like a pig eating its own arse. 

Worse enough, worse enough. It was worse enough to begin with, stringing up his hammock right next to Linde like the bloody Dane _didn’t_ drop a tonne on Sam back in Falmouth, but now Linde’s snoring like he’s got no cares in the world. He probably doesn’t. He’s fine. It’s nothing. He’s probably dreaming of fluffy pastry and sweet cheese and doesn’t have to see his brother’s face squashed beyond knowing, or have to worry about breaking the news to his nieces and Maggie if the Company doesn’t get that done first. No, Lars Linde sleeps the sleep of the snoring angels, never mind who else he keeps awake. 

It’s unmanly, but fuck it, but Nathan wishes that whoever conked Linde out had finished the job. 

Feh. If wishes were fishes, Nathan wouldn’t be on a ship in the first place. 

He could do it, though. Knock him out, pitch him overboard. With Nichols and all them gone the watch is short-handed, and with no Formosans in the hold there’s no extra eyes. It would be easy. It would be just. 

Nathan looks over at Linde’s chest, rising and falling with that horrible snore, out of time with the rocking of the ship. 

_Tomorrow,_ he thinks, but it brings him little comfort. And he knows he won’t do it then either.

*

**27\. Zungi Sathi, Steward to the Ship and its Passengers**

Mr. Sefton is dead of idiocy. Wasim is dead of Mr. Sefton’s idiocy. To behold their corpses at opposite ends of this flight of stairs makes Sathi’s stomach plummet at least as far as Wasim did, and he shuts his eyes as if that will hold in the bile and the anger. 

Leaving the bodies where they lay, Sathi ascends to the main deck, where there are even more. Three of his own charges, Mr. Nichols, and poor young Diom with quills protruding from his chest, lying ignored while the Captain orders these vile creatures brought on board. 

At the forecastle, the Captain confers with his remaining mates, but Doctor Evans at least is alone with the dead, though he seems more concerned with the time. He holds his pocketwatch open over Mr. Sia, and his eyes are as fogged as those of the corpse, staring vacantly at the clock’s face as if what he seeks is behind his palm. 

It isn’t ticking. 

“Doctor Evans,” Sathi says, in English. It doesn’t snap him out of it, so he tries again in Tamil, a little louder. When that doesn’t work either, he lays his hand on Doctor Evans’s shoulder and calls him Henry. 

The effect is instantaneous; the pocketwatch clicks shut in Doctor Evans’s fist, which is shaking like a frond in a monsoon. He breathes, one quick gust of air and then the rest come short, and he turns aside, shrugging Sathi’s hand off his shoulder as if it burns. 

“What devilry is this?” Sathi asks him, before he can make any excuses. “What are these creatures?”

“Something to keep the rest of your charges away from,” Doctor Evans says, which is no answer. 

“Are they dead for their _cargo?_ ” Only through years of experience with deference Sathi manage to keep from spitting that word out. 

Doctor Evans looks over his shivering shoulder at the passel of crewmen hefting the golden chest, carefully guiding it over the rail, eyeing the stairs to the gun deck. A level down, there are more corpses on the next set of stairs. These will be shoved aside while the so-called treasure follows the beasts that brought it into the hold. 

“Why don’t you stop them?” Sathi asks, because if he does not, no one will. 

When Doctor Evans does not answer, Sathi raises his eyes so that he cannot ignore them, and tells instead of asks: “There are two more dead on the gun deck. Do not forget them.”

Doctor Evans tucks the watch away, and thanks him as he goes, but Sathi’s heart still breaks.

*

**48\. Nathan Peters, Seaman**

When the Captain kneels to open drawer of the golden chest, right there on the deck, Nathan is there.

It glows. Whatever’s in there _glows_ , with a light to rival the moon, maybe even the sun, the sun’s _out_ and Nathan can still see the Captain’s face light up like a Guy Fawkes effigy. 

Then the Captain shuts the drawer with a click, and it’s gone, but something _nags_ at the back of Nathan’s skull, like the rage that keeps him awake.

When the Captain tells him and the others, “To the lazarette with it – and Filip, fetch the key,” Nathan is tempted, so tempted, to say _no_.

*

**6\. Alfred Klestil, Bosun**

As soon as the door closes behind Hoscut, Wiater whips around and says, clearly despite his heavily Polish-accented French, “This is a terrible idea.”

They speak French when they are together, the four of them – Mr. Wiater, Mr. Wolff, Charles, and Alfred himself – out of politeness to both Mr. Wiater, whose German is as piecemeal as his English, and to Charles, whose Polish is insufficient to the task. Alfred raises both hands in that universally soothing gesture and makes sure to look Mr. Wiater in the eye. “Peace, my friend. The Captain only wants to be sure of what Nichols was about. There will be an investigation. He wants evidence.”

“You know the English,” Mr. Wolff adds, blunt and humorless. “They cannot let well enough alone.”

Charles snickers lightly; Alfred cannot help but crack a smile as well, but it is tight and doesn’t sit on his jaw for long. “More to the point, Mr. Wiater; in the end, it is the Captain’s decision,” Alfred points out. “He consulted us, and for that I am grateful, but in the end it is his choice.”

“That does not mean I cannot question him,” Mr. Wiater says.

Sourly, and with a wince at the corner of his eye, Mr. Wolff nods. “When the time comes, you may well have to. But until then, you must maintain the rule of law, and the Captain’s word is as law.”

Mr. Wiater’s shoulders slump, and he cracks his neck sharply sideward as if to wring out a kink. “I will. But I do not think I am alone in my...” bothered for the word, he looks to Charles, who tends to know such things.

“Concerns,” Charles suggests.

“ _Concerns,_ ” Alfred agrees in Polish, and then in French goes on, “and you are not. But you have already raised them, and the Captain shot them down.”

Mr. Wiater gathers himself, all steel the way he must have been during the war in the Americas. “Fine. But if these creatures kill any more of our men, it is on the Captain’s head.”

“It is already on the Captain’s head,” Charles says, somberly.

With a brusque huff and a flash of his teeth, Mr. Wiater nods, tips the brim of his hat, then turns on his heel and leaves. If the door opens and shuts a touch more swiftly than it ought, none of the three remaining officers remark on it.

“How many?” Mr. Wolff asks.

“Beasts, or dead?” Alfred asks in turn.

“There were three beasts. Dead.”

Charles answers, “Today, four, and the Formosan guard. With Nichols at sea, another five, and the other two Formosans. Since we set out, ten crew, five passengers.”

Mr. Wolff whispers a universally understood German curse; Alfred, who cannot help but agree, sinks to sit on the edge of his bunk. “Mr. Wiater is right, you know. This is a terrible idea.”

“I am sure he’ll be glad to know,” Mr. Wolff says. Really, his sarcasm translates much better in German.

Mr. Wolff makes his goodbyes and sees himself out; once the door is shut, Charles sits beside Alfred on the bed and takes his hand, consolingly. Alfred tightens his grip and lets their joined hands fall to his knee.

“We will have to train a new cook,” Charles says, obviously trying to lighten the mood.

“That is the least of our problems,” Alfred sighs.

*

**11\. Marcus Gibbs, Carpenter’s Mate**

“We’re running low on sailcloth we can spare, boss,” Marcus says, because it is, unfortunately, true.

Mr. Smith looks up from working on Naples’s body, binding the canvas around his remaining leg. It turns Marcus’s stomach to think that that’ll be the easiest corpse to recognize, now. “We can use the hammocks,” Mr. Smith says. “If it happens to anyone else, I mean. If we have to.”

Marcus nods, deposits his bundle on the workbench, and walks over to the porthole to crack it open and let some salt air in. This place doesn’t smell like it should anymore. “You know, when we get back, I might ask to be reassigned.”

“You’ll have to do this on any ship.”

“I won’t on land,” Marcus points out. “I won’t, back home.”

“And I won’t stop you.” Mr. Smith’s smile is tight, but there, and he ties off the thread with a quick, hard yank. “But you know you’ll have to sail back, right?”

“Right,” Marcus sighs.

“And pay your way, or work it.”

“Right.”

“So you’re talking _years_ before you’re back in America, and years of this either way.”

“Not like this,” Marcus says, and hopes it doesn’t sound like a plea. “It can’t all be like this.”

If he shuts his eyes, he can hear the creatures crying in the lazarette.

“No,” Mr. Smith admits, with a chill edge that puts the corpses to shape. “But there are far worse ships to be on.”

*

**52\. Abraham Akbar, Seaman**

There are vacant hooks, now. So many. Akbar bundles up his things, and what he’s been left to him by Wasim and the others, and parcels it all upstairs. Spare clothes. Rajub’s necklace and comb, Wasim’s shaving kit. Syed’s inks.

Too many memories on the orlop deck, too much death. He’ll sleep easier with the cannons.

*

**28\. Filip Dahl, Steward to the Captain**

they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming they’re screaming

*

**13\. Emil O’Farrell, Butcher**

It’s supposed to be over quick. It was always supposed to be quick. Tap to the head, slit to the throat. Emil’s killed so many. He doesn’t fuck it up like this. Quick is good. Quick is humane. A slow death spoils the meat.

They aren’t killing him for his meat.

They aren’t _killing_ him, they’ve just spiked him to a wall like a thing at the Royal Society, like the cow skull over the pen, but the skull is a skull cleaned and dry and the beast is dead, and Emil is not.

*

**59\. George Shirley, Seaman**

For a fleeting moment, George is proud of himself that he remembered to scream “Duck!” in Chinese instead of English. He’s been working hard. He’s been practicing.

When the demon runs its claws through Jie anyway, George realizes with a sick horror that he’ll never know whether he said it wrong.

*

**16\. Duncan McKay, Purser**

He slams the door shut, braces himself against it, and chokes the vomit back into his throat.

Someone is groaning outside. Wounded. Not dead. Close, and crawling, and reeking of blood even through the slats of the door. The sound creeps up Duncan’s legs like ants from a hill, biting and burning, and that one thought of ants calls the _demons_ to mind and Duncan will open the door for no one.

 _No one._ Not until it’s safe to take the books and go. He’s dead if he stays, but he’s ruined if he leaves without them.

*

**21\. Emily Jackson, Passenger**

It is not Emily’s first voyage. It is not even her second. She knows the rules quite well by now. Her husband died of earnest foolhardiness when he tried to help out during a storm on a trip to Spain some years ago. It is a strange comfort to think that his bones lie not far from here, and if strange comfort is the only Emily can take at the moment she will _take_ it because the rules are to be followed whether they comfort her or not. 

There is an enemy aboard; the alarm is sounded; Emily will stay in her damned cabin and make sure Jane does too. 

But the _sounds_ , God and all his Angels. There is no rain, no wind, though she would swear that lightning struck not minutes ago. Screaming, ozone, the report of guns, the crackle of near fire, the thud of body on wood and iron, all this she expected, and awful as it is in counterpoint with the hammering of her heart there is worse to be heard. 

No man screeches like that, not even a dying one. No thing wrought by the hand of God could sound so unholy. It is as if the world has torn, and there is nothing on the other side. 

In Emily’s arms, poor Jane shivers and crams herself closer to the wall. Emily shushes her and holds on, even if every instinct she possesses is telling her to run. 

Then the door to the cabin slams open, and Emily’s heart nearly gives out. 

“It’s me,” Abigail pants, shutting the door immediately, cutting off the inhuman shape of her skirts and wild hair in the low firelight even as Emily and Jane’s shrieks of terror still echo in the tiny room. “It’s me. Forgive me.”

Jane wails and buries her face in Emily’s chest; Emily is still tasting blood in her throat from the fright, but shifts over enough to make room for Abigail on the bed because the pounding in her head is telling her if she doesn’t move she will go mad. With the door shut it’s too dark to see Abigail clearly, even as close as she’s come, but her hair feels wild and frayed and her bodice reeks of sweat and gunpowder. 

“Are they coming?” Jane whimpers. “Pirates?” 

Abigail and Emily’s eyes meet. Emily already knows the answer, but asks wordlessly anyway, and Abigail just stares back, her pupils like saucers in the dark. Whatever Emily has heard, Abigail has _seen._

There are worse things to consider at sea than the works of man. 

It is very easy, and probably necessary, to pretend they haven’t heard her.

*

**33\. Peter Milroy, Midshipman**

What’s left of Charlie’s body is still warm to the touch. The fire didn’t take him down to the bone, not really, just blistered and charred him all over leaving a thick ashy shell. He smells, perversely and predictably, like overcooked meat. O’Farrell would find it hilarious. O’Farrell’s gone too.

Wallace’s books never described the stench. They went into detail about the blisters, and how deep they go, and what to do with the skin, and Pete still has Wallace’s copy of Richter back in the cabin, somewhere. Wallace is gone too. In two pieces, by the stairs. Right next to Zhang. Zhang’s gone too.

Pete shakes the thoughts out of his head, or tries at least, and goes back to extricating Charlie from the – thing, demon, spider, _something_ , they’re almost the same color, the same hardness except Charlie’s skin is flaking off in chunks and going _splosh_ in the mix of blood, water, and viscous yellow gel that might be endocuticle that’s spread all over the floor. Pete doesn’t slip on it.

Charlie’s much lighter, dead. It seems wrong. Maybe you’re only heavier if all of you is left.

One more yank, and the demon’s husk collapses to the deck without Charlie holding it together. Pete catches his breath, or tries to, and looks up: there’s Tom, on the other side of the carnage, and his breath’s come short again too.

“To the carpenters’?” Pete asks, because he has to say _something_ , and then, no, he’s wrong. There’s Mr. Gibbs, over Tom’s shoulder, slung between Linde and Gul like a hammock.

It takes Pete a moment to tell that Tom’s shaking his head _no_ , the motion’s so small at first. But it gets stronger, more like a shiver, and Tom looks away.

“I – think we’re out of sails,” Tom chokes out. “I just checked. And, we’re. We don’t have hammocks. He, doesn’t have a hammock. We’ll have to use his sheets.”

Pete nods. If his next breath comes out in a sob, only Tom has to hear it, right?

*

**5\. John Davies, Fourth Mate**

“Pitch them over,” John says. He ordinarily wouldn’t make a demand of the Captain, it’s not fucking _proper_ , but this is madness, and half the crew is slaughtered, and propriety can go to wherever these devils came from for all John cares. “Go tell Dahl he was right, because he was, and give him his sword back in case there’s more where _that_ came from, and then pitch the blasted things over where they belong.”

Captain Witterel looks at him the way John imagines he looks at a stain on his cravat. “The shells, or the creatures?”

“Yes,” John says.

“Then no,” the Captain says, just as curt, just as cutting. “If anything, we should keep them all. England needs to know. Things like this _exist,_ and the Crown needs to know. We’ll turn around, and bring them all with us.”

“We don’t need all of them,” Hoscut suggests, ever the negotiator. “We have the corpses of the crustaceans, and perhaps one of the riders. Toss the shells and the chest overboard, nothing good has come of that, and with no Formosans to explain its workings we might well wash our hands of the ordeal. The...things, in the lazarette, we can’t move those without risking more of the crew, but if we incapacitate them, it may be possible.”

The Captain barks out a laugh. “And throw away the living proof of what we’ve endured? Backwards, William.”

“More so backward,” Perrott says, gently, from his place by the door, “that we should be throwing our men into the sea, at the expense of creatures we’re taking out of it.”

John looks between them: Perrott’s experience cannot be overstated, and in the two years John has served with Witterel, he’s never seen the Captain outright shoot down Perrott. Hoscut, sure, they argue like brothers, but Perrott is something else.

There is, John supposes, a first time for everything.

“They, not we, are dragging our men into the sea,” the Captain says. “They’re sirens, and it’s what they do. We are taking recompense for the lives they stole.”

A knock pierces the room like a shot, and John involuntarily claps a hand over his heart, remembering the _pop_ of giant carapaces not half an hour ago, the sickening thuds of their spines embedding themselves in flesh.

“Yes?” Hoscut calls to the door, because it’s his quarters, after all.

“Is Robert with you?” Abigail asks from the other side.

They all look to the Captain; he, after a quiet moment, nods to them, and calls out, “Come in, darling.”

The door, it seems, cannot open fast enough, and Martin and John find themselves stepping aside rather quickly as Abigail storms in, skirts wet and fire in her eyes, and plows past all three mates to bury her face in Robert’s chest. “We are going _home_ ,” she says, muffled in his coat.

“Yes,” he says, putting his arms around her. “You can tell Mr. Dalton that yourself.”

“It’s your job, not mine. But, good. The ladies are beside themselves wondering if they’re next.”

“I assure you, they’re not.”

“Good,” she says again, then backs out of his embrace, before going over to Hoscut and holding him for a moment as well. “And you both owe us an explanation.”

“Says you,” Hoscut chides, fondly. 

She pulls back, rolling her eyes, then gives an uneasy smile to Martin and John on her way back out. 

The instant the door is shut, John whips around to the Captain and levels him with an unambiguous, near-mutinous glare. “Pitch the shells over. _Sir._ ”

*

**41\. Wei Lee, Topman**

After the now-highest ranked steward unlocks the lazarette and stands aside, Wei brings in the prisoner’s food. Dahl is half-asleep where he’s chained in the corner, and it’s nothing to place the plate within reach.

The Captain is being far too generous, and a hypocrite besides, Wei thinks: the late Formosan guard only maybe murdered someone, and they executed him, but Dahl definitely murdered someone and he’s alive. Even if the creatures are sloshing around in the water beneath the grates and warbling once in a while, and the gold chest, locked and empty, stands taunting on the other side of the makeshift cell, it’s not the torture the Captain probably thinks it is.

Wei kicks Dahl’s leg to wake him, and Dahl stirs and grumbles along with the rattling of his chains.

“There’s food,” Wei says, pointing.

“What _happened?_ ” Dahl asks, and Wei has no idea where, or whether, to begin, and if he has enough English to explain all he’s seen.

He looks at the chest, and then at the grates that hold the beasts at bay, and points from one to the other.

Dahl’s eyes bulge as large as the potatoes on his plate. “Did they get close?”

“To the stairs,” Wei answers.

“They can take the stairs?”

Wei has no idea how to answer that. How can he explain the creatures? _Crab_ is inadequate, _fish_ is wrong, _demon_ is closest but he doesn’t know the English for it, and more to the point Dahl didn’t see it because he’s in here, imprisoned, a murderer, yet still alive.

Wei turns around, shaking his head, and knocks on the door so the midshipman can let him out.

“Wait,” Dahl says, his chains scraping the floor.

Wei turns to humor him.

“I need a fork,” Dahl says, gesturing to the plate.

Wei knows that look in Dahl’s eyes: he’s seen it before on children up to no good, on men with schemes, on anyone who’s ever haggled in a marketplace. That fork is going to be used to pick the lock on Dahl’s manacles, and Wei will eat his shoes if the next time he comes in here Dahl doesn’t use that as an excuse to break out.

He spares another glance at the chest, gleaming in the shifting, water-stained light from the lanterns just beyond the door. 

Pretending he didn’t understand _fork_ , Wei takes a spoon out of his kit – he can replace it later, from Hong’s or Zhang’s – and tosses it in Dahl’s general direction.

He’ll make sure someone else has to bring the prisoner food next time.

*

**31\. Roderick Andersen, Steward to the Third Mate**

Rod hasn’t stopped shaking. It’s off rhythm with the ship, it’s off rhythm with his heart, and it’s off rhythm with Davey’s intermittent shivering on the other side of the room. The boy is trying to sleep. Good. If he manages it, he’s made of stronger stuff than Rod at half his age. And he if doesn’t, he can be forgiven.

But every time Rod shuts his eyes, the demons rest behind them, lightning-black in the dark, husks shining in the flashing report of guns, rust-red spears and hollow tooth-yellow spikes nearly the same color as the blood and flesh they’ve destroyed, twisting the shapes of men into something _not_ , something more like the beasts themselves.

A gentle knock is still startling, but the voice that follows is as soothing as it can be. Like the sea when there’s nothing troubling it. “Roderick? Are you awake?”

“Yes, sir,” he says, though he projects only a little. When Davey doesn’t stir at the sound, Rod decides that’s less likely because he’s actually managed sleep and more likely because he’d rather keep trying, and either way Rod is quiet on his way out of bed and out the door.

Mr. Perrott is on the other side, holding a mug in either hand. His smile is strained by the weight of laden eyes, and in the near-dark there’s no glimmer of humor in them, but the stability, the solidity, is more welcome than anything else. “Walk with me,” Mr. Perrott says, passing one of the mugs into Rod’s hands before he can say otherwise, as if he would.

The mug is warm and lightly steaming; the light spear-scent of rum wafts up from the cloudy liquid, black tea and milk. _Tea_ , like the officers get whenever they like.

“I already had my ration, sir,” Rod manages, flabbergasted but falling into step.

“Given the circumstances, I’d say no, lad, you haven’t.” Mr. Perrott rounds a still-uprooted wreckage and heads for the stairs, and Rod follows. The starlight is _wrong_ the same way the lightning was wrong without rain yesterday, but there they are, the stars and galaxies and their reflections on deck and in the undulating sea.

With a nod at Mr. Dalton at the helm, Mr. Perrott leads him to the forecastle, and once he gets there, he brings the mug to his lips and exhales on it to cool the liquid enough to drink. Rod does the same, standing a little to the side but still where he can see Mr. Perrott’s face.

“You conducted yourself well yesterday,” Mr. Perrott says. “I hope you know that.”

Rod didn’t want to think about that, and doesn’t agree, but hides that troubled breath in cooling the tea and rum enough to drink. Once he’s taken a sip – and God in Heaven, that’s good – he lowers the mug enough to say, “If you say so, sir.”

Mr. Perrott’s hand comes down on Rod’s shoulder, warm from the tea, pale in the starlight. “You stood by the passenger doors. You put yourself between them and harm. You’re not a soldier, Rod, and yet you took up arms. In my eyes that’s commendable.”

“I wish I hadn’t,” Rod murmurs before he can stop himself.

“Why?”

 _Because then I’d never have seen them,_ Rod thinks, and this time clamps down on it before the words come out. But the result of that is seeing the creatures over again, hearing the scrape of their claws on the deck, the unholy shrieking, the crackle of their eyes—

Mr. Perrott, clearly sensing something wrong, taps his fingers on Rod’s shoulder where he’s already held still. “Drink,” he says gently. “At the very least, it will help you sleep.”

Rod had almost forgotten about the tea and rum, and the scent hits him all at once again, driving the images out the best they can. He shuts his eyes, and drinks, and it’s a little hot still but doesn’t burn, at least.

Fear has a taste. Tea and rum and milk will mask it, for now.

Mr. Perrott goes on, “Remind me to tell you about my service on the _Shrewsbury,_ tomorrow perhaps,” with a visible quirk to his mustache through the steam. “We limped to Jamaica with our sails in tatters and the French still raining splinters from the rigging, and I didn’t sleep for a month. I saw nothing but fire from all sides, men shredded right beside me, smoke so thick that all flags looked the same, the fear never knowing from where the guns will fire. And you just faced it – so it’s no wonder that it keeps you awake. Your mind must reconcile it, to prove that it was real. But your body needs rest. You faced it in the flesh; the dreams will not hurt you.”

Rod nods, and hisses through his teeth into the mug so that the steam curls up against his chin. “Of course, sir.”

“You don’t have to pretend to believe me, lad,” Mr. Perrott laughs. “But you do have to sleep. Come. _Shrewsbury_ is too exciting; let me see how much Montesquieu I remember, that always puts my grandsons to sleep.”

For the first time in days, Rod is startled into a laugh; when he falls into step behind Mr. Perrott, it is almost _normal._

*

**56\. Henry Brennan, Seaman**

Hal is binding the five remaining legs of the thing that killed Mr. Smith when the alarm goes up again. The others are too burned or crushed to be of any use, Doctor Evans said when he gave the order. Of use to whom, Hal didn’t ask. 

At this point, he’s got more questions than he’s got hairs left on his head. It’s not his place, but once this is done, someone had better fucking answer them. 

But the alarm is up, and this demon is already dead, so it’s time to get to a place where he can shoot first, shoot second, and ask questions later. 

Then the ship keels, and Hal’s head meets the corner of a crate, and he’s not going anywhere. 

When he comes to a few minutes later, he will be the last living seaman on board, and his questions will still go unanswered.

*

**7\. Charles Miner, Bosun’s Mate**

When the beast takes Alfred’s arm, Charles knows what he must do.

He takes the beast’s. It is, honestly, that simple.

Unfortunately for Charles, the beast has several more.

*

**36\. Omid Gul, Topman**

He lands well. He keeps his head when he strikes the water, and covers it when he surfaces, gasping. He has not drowned, not yet at least, and the black hull of the _Obra Dinn_ , heaving on the waves, is still near. He casts about for any debris to hand, swimming with all his might, turban and sword long gone to the black but he cannot care, not when his life may yet be spared by the sea.

There! – a log, or a resting broken beam, just above the surface, roiling with it. Omid pumps his arms and legs for all they’re worth, up the wave and down it, crashing into the solidity and holding on.

It is warmer than the water around it. And has a pulse, three beats, four, five.

He barely has time to curse his luck before the beast seizes and drags him under. He holds what breath he can, and his eyes sting with salt, and be freezes when he cannot help but see.

Whether he stares into a mouth or an eye, he does not stare for long.

*

**4\. Martin Perrott, Third Mate**

The _Obra Dinn_ still casts port-to-starboard, starboard-to-port, the aftershocks of a quake that Martin yet feels in his bones. The beast is gone, or gone for now, but Martin does not trust anything more than the pounding of his heart that says _this business is not finished_. He takes the stairs, carefully, a hand braced on whatever wall or rail or rope there is within reach.

The main deck was awful—the gun deck is, in a way, worse. No sails hang in tatters below, but poor Roderick’s is not the only corpse on this floor, and the damage to the _Obra Dinn_ is more evident here; scores in the hull, cannons upended, and a singed tentacle of the kraken proof that what has befallen them here is not the work of man. The signs lurk the orlop still like a disease in remission, the lingering smells of blood and the fire and remains of those crustaceans, the charred meat and acid ozone smell indelible from the bones of the ship. And below, in the cargo and keel...

Below, there is Captain Witterel, roaring in the lazarette like a man possessed. The creatures slosh in their prison, or _something_ does, as the Captain rails and the gratings croak, and this...this, had Martin not seen Hell and all its devils come above, would terrify him.

If his heart were not already broken, here it might well shatter.

An animal cry, and a fiery curse, in what had been a voice of cool authority that Martin happily served for a decades, echoes like a blast through the lazarette porthole. A captive beast warbles in turn, dying, and were it not for the pitch Martin could not tell them apart. 

“Sir,” he says, only years of experience and war and madness holding him together. “Sir, the creature has withdrawn.”

The Captain’s chest heaves as he leans on the haft of spear, mounted in one of the gratings, almost certainly propped up in the corpse of a beast. Breath rattles through him, hoarse and pained, but he rights himself as Martin watches through the porthole. He comes away from the gratings, to the other side of the door. Sweat and grey water cake his hair to his skin, and his eyes are heavy and cold.

Martin has seen those eyes before; blazing with white hatred, in the demons that came aboard on crustacean steeds.

For a moment, Martin’s tongue holds like wood in his throat. He cannot tell this man what happened on deck. It would kill them both.

But, _No,_ Martin tells himself, breathing deep with the cant of the ship. _He is no beast; he is my Captain; he is a man, and deserves the care and courtesy of any man._

“Abigail is dead,” Martin tells him.

Though the ship cants side-to-side, Captain Witterel pitches forward, and catches himself on the door, his knuckles sheet-white and shivering.

“How,” the Captain croaks, too low and rough to discern its question.

Martin tells him.

*

**29\. Paul Moss, Steward to the First Mate**

The beast doesn’t shoot him or Davey, though the glint of further spikes can be seen forming, needling out of its belly and chest. Paul squares his jaw and keeps lugging, taking as much of the weight off Davey as he can, since the beast probably can’t help thrashing its tail. Eels are the same. Stuck animals are the same. Paul’s family had a recalcitrant cat that hated being put out the door, and while the cat would probably resent being compared to this malevolent sea-creature the images intersect in Paul’s mind.

They finally make it up the two flights necessary to put the creature over; Davey, winded, sags and lets the twitching tail fall to the deck, but Paul holds on. The shell in the creature’s grasp is horrifyingly bright, like a sun the wrong side of the clouds, and it stings Paul’s eyes enough that salt breaks the corners.

Lifting on his own, the creature’s weight is about the same as the dead bodies he’s assisted with, sending them overboard. Though, this creature’s deep, black eyes are open, shining behind their filmy inner lids, perhaps just as stung as Paul is by the brightness of the shell.

Their eyes meet.

It is a sensation akin to falling. In the instant, he knows why those stories are written and sung.

He sees pain, and intelligence, and life.

“Forgive us,” he says, and shoves her over the rail, the shell still clutched in her arms.

*

**18\. Edward Spratt, Ship’s Artist**

Most men shit when they die; few die when they shit.

There is no such thing as a pretty corpse, but Spratt’s is egregiously awful, and that Doctor Evans doesn’t cover his nose and mouth when he stoops to retrieve Spratt’s sketchbook is testament only to years of sights and scents more foul.

His hands itch for the pocketwatch, but, perhaps ironically—

“There’s no time, sir,” young Davey says. His eyes are wide and wet with already having seen too much.

“You’re right, lad,” Doctor Evans sighs as he turns away, tucking the sketchbook into his satchel with the rest. “You’re right. Let’s be gone.”

*

**1\. Robert Witterel, Captain**

In the eyes of Country and Crown, Robert Witterel is already dead. 

He contemplates Abigail as she lies in their bed, paler than the sheets, her bruises and hollows bluer than either sea or sky. He still does not know when the blow was struck. He still does not know whether it matters. The beast is gone. The beast is gone because Robert bade it go. He would have lived with that, had it not taken her. 

He is already dead. It comes down to the matter of how.

*

**2\. William Hoscut, First Mate**

It takes time and care to load a pistol. It takes no time, but a great deal of care, to draw it. 

But whether to draw it – and on whom – is still a choice he will not make lightly.

***


End file.
